City of Exiles (9781101607596)

by Nevala-lee, Alec

  Looking at the station, despite her wariness, Asthana had to admit that it was beautiful. High above, she could just make out the birds winding in tight circles overhead. She kept an eye on them, hoping to spot a falcon among the gulls. Falcons, she knew, sometimes made their nests in the brickwork of the station, mistaking it for the cliffs that had once been their home.

  When Garber spoke again, there was a strange tone in his voice. “You know, they’re planning to build offices and apartments here. They’ve been trying to modernize it for years, ever since the plant shut down. I think they should leave it alone. Keep it the way it is now.”

  Asthana noticed that his eyes remained fixed on the smokestacks. “Keep it as what?”

  “A temple to power,” Garber said flatly. “A reminder of what really makes the world go round.”

  For the first time since they had left the office, he turned to look at her directly. She was unsettled by his air of intensity, which she had rarely seen before. “What are you talking about?”

  Garber turned back to the plant. “Look at Russia. As long as Russia controls the supply of power to Europe, there’s never going to be political change, no matter what someone like Chigorin thinks. Powell seems to believe he’s a potential target, but I don’t buy it. Do you?”

  “Chigorin has certainly made enemies in the intelligence services,” Asthana said carefully. “He’s threatened to destroy them for good—”

  “But he’ll never be able to do it. Don’t you see? Chigorin is popular in the West, but even if he decides to run for office, he doesn’t have the same kind of support back home. He’ll never win an election or be in a position to influence policy directly. As much as he talks about smashing the intelligence services, he isn’t a real threat. Gaztek doesn’t care if he cobbles together a coalition. As long as they control the flow of gas to the rest of Europe, the regime is safe.”

  “You may be right,” Asthana said, although she still wasn’t sure where this conversation was going. “But you don’t need to win an election to influence things. The world is changing. A man like Stavisky, the whistle-blower, can affect government policy just by posting a few documents online. Chigorin seems to be coming around to this fact, at least from what I’ve heard.”

  “From Powell, you mean?” Garber shook his head. “Cornwall is backing him for now, yes, but she’s just looking to buy time with the Home Office. As soon as she has enough to protect the agency, she’ll cut him loose. Even I can see the writing on the wall—”

  Asthana began to understand why Garber had wanted to have this conversation away from Vauxhall. “Look, I agree with you that this investigation has made some mistakes. But there’s no question that someone is scared of what we might find. They planted a bomb in my car. It could have taken me out instead of Wolfe. You can’t ask me to ignore that.”

  “But there are problems there, too,” Garber said. “The more I think about it, the more that bomb bothers me. Look at how they put it together. It’s the easiest thing in the world to stick a few pounds of explosive and a tilt fuse under the driver’s seat. Instead, for no good reason, they wire it relay fashion, so half the bomb doesn’t even go off. As if it was meant to fail.”

  Asthana turned to look more closely at Garber. “But what would be the point?”

  “Maybe somebody is trying to implicate Russian intelligence.” Before Asthana could object, Garber went on, saying, “Hear me out. Let’s say that someone wanted us to make the connection to Russia. They use plastic explosive that could be easily traced to an intelligence source. They time the blast to coincide with a series of killings that all but advertise an intelligence angle, so that someone like Ilya can see it from a mile away. They even tie it in with this alleged plot against Chigorin, who seems like an obvious target, even if he isn’t. The result looks exactly like an intelligence conspiracy. But it’s something else entirely.”

  Asthana had listened to this speech in silence. “All right. So what is it, then?”

  “I don’t know,” Garber said. “But I think someone is trying to tie Russian intelligence to a plot that doesn’t have anything to do with it. Or perhaps one branch of the security services is trying to implicate another. You know that the military side, the GRU, has no love for its civilian rivals at the FSB. There’s only so much money to go around. If I’m right, they’re just toying with us.”

  “Powell wouldn’t agree with you,” Asthana said. “What has he said about this?”

  Garber looked at the birds circling overhead. “I haven’t told him about it yet. I was hoping that you and I—”

  He broke off. Looking down, he was visibly surprised to see the knife buried up to the hilt in his side.

  Garber looked up again at Asthana, who had taken the Spyderco knife silently from her purse. Before he could speak, she stuck the knife in deeper, then withdrew it, taking him by the hair in almost the same motion. Pulling his head back, she drew the serrated blade smoothly beneath his chin, cutting his throat.

  The rest did not take long. Asthana watched, face expressionless, as Garber bled out, his eyes wide and fixed on hers. Mouth falling open, he tried to raise his hands, but they fell to his lap. She had been careful to sever the carotid arteries, so it took only a few seconds for the fall in pressure to render him unconscious, the blood pulsing down the front of his shirt and pooling on the driver’s seat.

  Asthana waited until she was sure he was dead. Then she wiped the knife on a clean corner of Garber’s shirt and set it on the dashboard. Around the darkened car, the street was silent and deserted.

  Taking the phone from her purse, she dialed a number from the list of recent calls. After a few rings, it went to voicemail.

  “Hi, Devon,” Asthana said tonelessly at the end of her fiancé’s recording. She looked up at the smokestacks in the distance. “Sorry to do this to you, but it looks like I’ll be working late again—”

  37

  The next day, at a few minutes before ten, the cruise ferry docked in the south harbor of Helsinki. At half an hour after sunrise, the temperature was only slightly above freezing, but Karvonen stood bareheaded as he looked out at the city. It was the first time he had returned in more than a year, and as he regarded the green neoclassical domes of the cathedral, outlined above the prim buildings of Market Square, he knew at last that he was home.

  At Olympia Terminal, he disembarked with the other passengers, many of whom still had bleary eyes from the night before. Leaving the harbor, he rented a car and stowed his luggage in the ample trunk. He spent the rest of the morning sightseeing, driving out to the city’s central square and parking not far from the cathedral. Mounting the steps, he spent a quiet hour inside, studying the altarpiece, flanked with kneeling angels, that displayed the deposition of Christ.

  Afterward, he ran a few small errands, including a visit to an electronics shop, where he picked up a soldering kit and a handful of other components. The total cost of his purchases was less than thirty euros. By the time he left, the sun was already setting, although it was barely half past three.

  He went for dinner at a restaurant near the square. Stationing himself at a table in the corner, his back to the wall, he ordered his usual Lapin Kulta, along with some mussel soup and whitefish. It was only then, as he took his first swallow of beer, that he saw the woman seated alone at a table across the room.

  Karvonen studied her over the top of his glass. She was young and thin, almost bony, with long dark hair and blue eyes that were the most arresting thing about an otherwise plain face. Her mouth was wide and solemn, with something of the seriousness of a child watching the world before it could speak.

  At the moment, however, she was focusing on the book at her side, a collection of John Donne’s poetry. When her order came, it turned out to be a kind of vegetable crepe, which she ate with a fork in one hand, keeping the book open with the other.
Now and then, between pages, she would glance absently at the diners around her, but her eyes never met Karvonen’s.

  After finishing her meal, she settled the bill, slid the book into her big purse, and rose from the table. Karvonen paid his own check quickly, then followed her outside, leaving the restaurant a few seconds after she did. He watched as she climbed into a blue Volvo parked at the curb, keeping an eye on her as he headed for his own car. When she pulled into the street, he did the same.

  It was fifteen minutes to her neighborhood, which lay in the Vantaa district. Karvonen slowed as they turned on a quiet residential street, and parked his car half a block away. He watched through his windshield as she left her Volvo and went into a modest bungalow. Then he got out as well, pausing only to retrieve his equipment from the rear of the car.

  Going up to the porch, he found that she had left the front door unlocked. He stepped inside. Closing the door behind him, he set his bag down in the foyer, then headed for the kitchen, where the light had been turned on. In one hand, he was carrying the bottle of Armagnac.

  She was standing in the kitchen, her back to the door, looking out the window at the night beyond. When he entered, she spoke without turning around. “You look different from last time.”

  “I’m glad to say you look the same.” Karvonen came up behind her and produced the Armagnac. “I hope you recognize this, at least.”

  She accepted the bottle, clutching it for a moment to her body, then turned. Her face remained as serious as always, but there was the hint of a smile in her eyes as she reached up and brushed the hair from his forehead. He had removed his dental plate, but his altered hairline and eyes remained. “I liked your old face better. Although I suppose it’s necessary in your line of work.” She thrust the bottle back into his hands. “Let’s have a drink.”

  As Karvonen opened the bottle, she took a pair of tulip glasses down from a cabinet. After he had poured the brandy, she put a finger in her glass and dabbed it on the back of her other hand, allowing the warmth of her skin to evaporate the alcohol, leaving only the aroma behind. She sniffed at it. “It’s good.”

  “I’m glad you like it.” Karvonen took a sip from his own glass, then looked across the kitchen at her. “It isn’t too late, Laila. You still have a chance to walk away. We’ve been concerned about your safety—”

  Laila regarded him contemptuously. “We’ve come too far to back away now. You of all people should know this.” Taking her glass, she headed for the kitchen door. “Come on. I have something for you.”

  She led him to a door in the hallway, which she unlocked with a key from her pocket. A flick of the light switch revealed a set of stairs leading to the basement. Karvonen quickly drained the rest of his glass, then left it on the hall table and followed her down the steps.

  On a workbench in the basement sat two packages, the ones he had sent from London a week before. Taking his new knife, he sliced them open one at a time, then set their contents on the bench. The first item was a heavy metal sphere about four inches across, packed in foam that he had cut to fit it exactly; the other was a flat plastic case with a depression in which the sphere could be set. Examining the components, Karvonen nodded. “Good.”

  He removed his jacket, which he had left on since his arrival, and pulled off his shirt. Underneath were the two small canisters that he had carried, taped between his shoulder blades, ever since his departure from London. He motioned for her to approach. “Help me with these.”

  Coming up behind him, Laila gently peeled away the cross of medical tape that held the canisters in place, her hands cool against his skin. Once the canisters were detached, she studied them for a moment, turning them over curiously, then set them on the bench, next to the rest of the device.

  Karvonen regarded the components. Looking at them now, he felt with sudden certainty that the rest of the plan would unfold exactly as foreseen. “You have the last item we discussed?”

  “Yes, it’s here.” From a drawer of the bench, she produced a box, already opened, for a mobile phone. “Nokia, of course—”

  Karvonen smiled at this. Opening the carton, he took out the phone, which had been removed from its inner packaging. “And the test?”

  “It went as expected. The phone returned safely. And no one suspected a thing.”

  “Good.” Karvonen set the phone down. “We’ll take care of the rest tomorrow.”

  Half an hour later, he was alone in the sauna. It was a tiny space with a cedar bench just wide enough for two, the kind that could be found in every Finnish bathroom. In the old days, the sauna would be built before the rest of the house, so that the workers would have a place to relax during construction. Now, after his own journey, Karvonen finally felt the tension falling away.

  As he ladled water onto the electric stones, watching the steam rise, he thought of his history with Laila. He had recruited her two years ago, under a false flag, after she had been identified as a potential recruit based on certain postings on a message board for the extreme right. After feeling her out online, he had spent six months cultivating her, feeding her nationalism, and plying her with gifts, until he had been flying out almost weekly from London.

  Karvonen smiled at these memories. Laila believed, not without reason, that he was an officer with the Finnish Security Intelligence Service. He had provided her with more than enough documentation to convince her of his story, but knew from his own experience that such evidence was less important than the target’s need to believe. Testing the depths of her rage, he had discovered that it knew no bounds, a well of anger that her calm exterior did not begin to express.

  He looked down at the wooden floor, feeling drops of sweat gathering on his body. Most of Laila’s family on her mother’s side had been killed in the air raids on Viipuri, which had been leveled by thousands of Russian bombs. The city had been erased, but its memory lived on, fueled by her mother’s stories, in much the same way that the war had been a part of his own childhood.

  Once the initial groundwork had been laid, it had been surprisingly easy to persuade her of the necessity of their mission. In her passion, and her hate, he saw possibilities that the rest of this timid country left unfulfilled. And in his more honest moments, she reminded him of something he had long since forgotten, a fierce loyalty to homeland that came before all else, no matter what the cost.

  As he reflected on this, the door of the sauna opened. He looked up to see Laila standing before him, dressed only in a light silk robe. A glass of Armagnac was in her hand. With her eyes on his, her face still solemn, she let the robe drop, first from one shoulder, then the other, until it fell to the floor.

  Underneath, she was naked, her body slender like a girl’s, with a slight boniness to the firmly muscled hips. Her hair was loose, and it came down to the middle of her back. The breasts were not large, but pleasingly shaped, and he saw her smile for the first time as she inverted the tulip glass in her hand, the amber liquid flowing in a glistening stream down the front of her body.

  Karvonen hesitated for a second, watching as she stepped into the sauna, her sweat already forming in bright pearls. As the liquor on her body evaporated in the heat, he could smell its perfume drifting up from her smooth skin, filling the small space with the aromas of apricots, figs, vanilla. He knew that if he bent his head forward only a few inches, he would taste it on his tongue.

  For another moment, he paused, uncertain of where this fit into the plan. At last, however, as she reached out to run a hand through his hair, he ducked his head and surrendered to all she had to offer.

  38

  The following morning, Ilya went to church. When the door of his cell was unlocked, he lined up with his fellow inmates on the middle landing, in front of a barred gate beneath a cube with a view of all four spurs. Through the glass walls of this enclosure, which was called the bubble, the guards watched as the gat
e was opened and the prisoners marched out along the linoleum floor.

  After a body search, Ilya headed with the others into the chapel. It was a fairly large space of red brick, twenty paces square, with two hundred plastic chairs for the congregants. At the front of the room stood the chaplain, a stocky figure in a threadbare suit, along with a drummer, a girl with a guitar, and three gospel singers in robes. Behind them was a mural of the Last Supper, painted years ago by a convicted murderer, with the disciples modeled on the faces of other inmates.

  At the rear of the chapel, which was rapidly filling, Grisha was seated next to a small, dark man with a beard. When Ilya caught his eye, Grisha nodded, then gestured to a vacant seat directly in front of him. Ilya made his way to this row, then took a seat and waited for the service to begin.

  Around him, the room rang with the voices of prisoners greeting friends from other spurs. After enduring this din for several minutes, the chaplain called for silence, threatening to send anyone caught talking straight to the segregation ward. Then he intoned the morning’s prayer: “The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together—”

  During the prayer, Ilya kept his eyes open, continuing to look around the room. The congregation, he had noticed, was divided into two distinct sections. Toward the front of the room, the first nine rows were mostly black, and they joined in loudly as the hymn began. The last eight rows, a mix of races, consisted of men with their heads bent, not in prayer, but in whispered conversations, as messages were exchanged and drugs passed from hand to hand.

  When the last notes of the hymn had died out, the chaplain began the sermon, on the theme of the cursing of the fig tree. As he did, Ilya heard Grisha speak from behind him: “Now, then. This is Osman.”